US Airways

From now through the end of January you can earn up to 125,000 bonus American Airlines AAdvantage miles on flights to Europe when you fly with American, British Airways, Finnair, Iberia, OpenSkies or US Airways. Registration prior to travel is required. You can register HERE.

The number of bonus miles you get depends on your class of service. To earn the full 125,000 bonus miles you’d have to fly in Business or First Class on five round-trip flights. For each Premium Economy or Full Fare Economy (fare classes Y, B, H) flight you can earn 7,000 bonus miles. And for all other Economy fares you’ll earn 2,000 bonus miles per flight.

Note that those mileage figures are for each round-trip flight.

The registration page has full information on which classes from the other airlines qualify for each of the bonuses.

Even though I currently have no plans to visit Europe, I’ll still register because – why not, it’s free!

I don’t have status with either American Airlines or US Airways. I’ve not yet flown a million (paid) miles. As such, I figured I would be far down on the chain of accounts to be combined. Working in my favor was the fact that I’d already pre-matched my AA and US accounts, so the program performing the transfer of US miles to AA wouldn’t have to try to figure out the account matching.

This morning I finally received the email that I’d been reading others had already received: my accounts have been matched.

When I look at my current AAdvantage activity on the AA website, there’s now an entry dated March 25 with a description of “Dividend Miles transferred” followed by the balance that was in my US Airways account. I’d taken a screen shot of my US miles earlier in the week to be sure that the correct number transferred over, and it did.

I did not have any miles in the Continental system at the time that they merged with United but I’ve heard numerous anecdotes of how badly things went with that process. I’m sure there may be some glitches along the line, especially for people who have status and are dealing with expected upgrades, etc. But since I’m not in that situation, it appears the merger is a complete success for me.

Today US Airways notified its Dividend Miles members that this weekend Dividend Miles will be transfer to the American Airlines AAdvantage program. All elite-qualifying activity will be combined as well. If you have a US Airways credit card from Barclay’s, that information will be updated with your AAdvantage number too.

If you want to book an award with US Airways miles, tomorrow at 11:59 PM CT is the last time to do that. Why would you want to book awards with US Airways miles instead of AAdvantage miles? There are certain “sweet spots” on the US Airways chart which require fewer miles through the US Airways program than through the AAdvantage program. Scott of MileValue.com covers those in his post Top Five US Airways Awards To Book Before It’s Too Late. And on the One Mile at a Time blog, Tiffany covers the reasons why you want to book now with a handy flow chart to indicate which program will work best for your situation.

Last week members of American Airlines’ AAdvantage program and US Airways’ Dividend Miles program received emails regarding the progress of the airlines’ merger in regards to the loyalty programs. For awhile we’d had word that the programs would merge during the second quarter of 2015 and it appears that not only are things on track for that, but that the merger will happen in April.

If you have miles in both programs and haven’t already done so, log into either your AAdvantage or Dividend Miles account and take note of the special banner inviting you to manually combine your accounts. It’s very simple and – speaking as an IT person myself – it will help out the IT folks if you take the reins and match up your accounts yourself. For this to work properly, your name must exactly match on both accounts and I suspect your address must match exactly as well. If the account data doesn’t match sufficiently, there will be instructions on how you can get the accounts to match.

Once the merger of loyalty programs is complete, your Dividend Miles will be transferred to your AAdvantage account on a 1-to-1 basis, per the recent communication from AA/US:

Moving to the AAdvantage program

Once we combine programs, we’ll begin transferring your Dividend Miles mileage balance, Preferred-qualifying activity and million mile balance into your AAdvantage account on a one-to-one ratio. We’ll determine your elite status level by looking at your combined elite-qualifying activity for 2014, and separately, your combined 2015 year-to-date elite-qualifying activity. It may take a few days to transfer everything, but we’ll email you once it’s completed.

As a member of the most rewarding airline loyalty program, you’ll continue earning miles when you fly on American, US Airways, oneworld® and other participating airlines, as well as with over 1,000 partners. And, you’ll still be able to redeem miles for flights, upgrades on American and US Airways, car rentals, hotel stays and more.

If you want to book award travel using your Dividend Miles, do so quickly as a few days before the merger, the Dividend Miles award booking function will be disabled. This is your last chance to take advantage of some of the sweet spots of the US Airways award chart, like these top five ways described by Scott of MileValue.com.

Booking award travel

Dividend Miles award bookings and mileage upgrade requests will be disabled a few days before we combine programs to allow us to integrate your accounts. If you plan to redeem Dividend Miles for an upcoming trip, we encourage you to book now. Once our programs are combined, Dividend Miles will be converted into AAdvantage miles, and you’ll be able to redeem AAdvantage miles with American.

Now through January 2, 2015 you get bonus miles when you buy US Airways Dividend miles. The bonus miles varies depending on how much you buy. If you max it out and buy 80,000 miles, you’ll get a 45,000 mile bonus for a total of 125,000 miles. For a cost of $2360, that comes out to 1.8 cents per point. That sounds like a decent deal when you consider that Ben values these miles at 1.6 cents each while Brian values them at 1.9 cents apiece. However, when you add in the taxes and fees, the actual cost is $2572 or 2.06 cents per point. Not such a great deal – unless you just need a few miles to top off an award. If you’re going to get a better value than that – then go for it! Also remember that purchased miles are processed by Points.com and therefore do not earn any airline bonus category miles on your credit card.

Remember that in the second quarter of next year Dividend Miles will be converted at a 1:1 ratio to American Airlines AAdvantage miles.

Oh, I’m so far behind! I went on vacation for 10 days and have been scrambling ever since I got back. There are several promotions going on right now, so let’s get to the good stuff:

30% Bonus on Purchased Club Carlson Points

Between now and the end of the month you can get a 30% bonus if you buy 10,000-40,000 Club Carlson points. I recently points for a two-night stay at the Radisson Blu in Istanbul. If you also have the Club Carlson credit card, the last night of any multi-night stay is free! Click HERE to learn more.

100% Bonus on Purchased Dividend Miles Extended Through October 12

Buy or gift US Airways Dividend Miles through October 12 and get a 100% bonus. Click HERE to be taken to the US Airways site.

1000 Bonus Gold Passport Points

Book your next Hyatt stay via their mobile app and earn a 1000 point bonus. There doesn’t seem to be any limit and it’s good through the end of the year! Click on the HERE to be taken to the Hyatt site.

2500 Bonus US Airways Dividend Miles

Use your US Airways Dividend Miles MasterCard at gas stations, restaurants, toy & game stores and department stores through the end of the year and receive up to 2500 bonus miles. That’s a bonus of spend in these categories up to $1250. You must activate this offer by October 20th! If you’re already a cardholder, you should have received info about this offer already.

That’s it for now. I’ve got some more updates coming including a report on my recent trip to Turkey. Stay tuned!

US Airways is well-known for selling miles at a discount. Now through September 30, 2014 they’re offering a tiered bonus when purchasing Dividend Miles. This can be a great way to top off your account if you’re just a little short of an award. Or if you want a business class ticket, you can buy 50,000 miles with a bonus of another 50,000 and, voila, you’ve got enough for that ticket. Just be sure that you can’t otherwise get the business class seat for less than the $1750 + tax price for those 100K miles!

To get the bonus, go to the US Airways website and click on the Buy Miles link. From there you’ll be prompted to log into your US Airways Dividend Miles account.

Business Class on a Lufthansa A330 is laid out in a 2x2x2 configuration with recliner seats. If you’d asked me before the trip I could have sworn I’d selected one of the middle seats since, as a solo traveler it meant I wouldn’t have to climb over anyone – or be climbed over. But I was assigned an aisle seat on the left side of the plane, 3C. My seatmate was already in place and I gathered he was a regular on the route as the flight attendants seemed to know him.

Lufthansa Business Class Amenity Kit

On the seat were a pillow and blanket and the amenity kit. I loved the little draw-string bag as it reminded me of a mini-beach duffel. Inside were the usual suspects: lip balm, skin creme, toothbrush & toothpaste, earplugs, eye mask and compression socks. Since this was a daytime flight I didn’t really use any of these but it was nice to have them.

As I learn to be a better blogger, one of my next steps will be to remind myself what I had to eat! As I look over the menu now I truly can’t remember what I had to eat. That tells me that it was good enough, if not memorable. The menu read as follows:

Service was attentive, but not annoying. I’m one who prefers to be left alone most of the time but I often found that whenever the FAs came by my seat I truly was ready for another round of water or I did want a snack. They were very pleasant and we had no language issues at all.

The IFE had quite a good selection. Only very rarely do I go to movies in the theater at home and I can’t even remember the last time I did. I was able to catch up on a couple of movies, Saving Mr. Banks and Frozen, that I had not seen before as well as a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory, a show I enjoy on occasion but don’t watch regularly.

Before too long we were touching down in Charlotte. It was my first time to use Global Entry and, wow, was that sweet! Gave the kiosk my fingerprints, it gave me a piece of paper and boom, I was through immigration! Fantabulous.

Then I had to go through security again for my connecting flight to Memphis. That’s when I noticed that I didn’t have the TSA Pre-Check logo on my ticket. (Not suprising as it was issued by Lufthansa.) I tried to talk my way into the line, stating I’d just been through Global Entry, but it was a no-go. Lesson learned – next time check in on the mobile app for the domestic portions of my flight! I’ll give that a try on my trip next month to see how it works.

Next stop was the US Airways Club. I found out, to my chagrin, that since Lufthansa and US Airways were no longer part of the same alliance, I was not allowed to use the club, even though I’d booked my tickets with US Airways miles. Once I got home I realized I could have shown my American Airlines Executive World Mastercard and gotten in, but I didn’t even think about it while I was there.

At this point I thought about trying to get on the earlier flight back to Memphis, though the agent in the club didn’t think I’d have much luck. But I hustled down to the gate only to be met with a crowd in the boarding area and a wait list. So I didn’t even approach the gate agents about trying to get on. Back to a restaurant where it was nice to see some of the hockey playoffs, even though my team (Go Predators!) wasn’t on the ice.

When it was finally time for my flight I headed to the gate and found I was in seat 1F. By this point I’d been awake about 20 hours, after a short night’s sleep, and I was grateful to have the window so I could doze off for the short flight.

But it was a fantastic trip all around and business class would not have been possible without the points. Can’t wait for my next big adventure in September!

I carry the Barclays US Airways Dividend Miles MasterCard. It offers some terrific benefits like a free checked bag for the card holder and up to 4 traveling companions on the same ticket, Group 1 boarding and bonus miles on US Airways purchases. Today I received a promo where I can earn a 30% bonus on miles this summer if I spend at least $2000 during the July 1 – August 31 timeframe. That’s really pretty easy to do, especially if you put your regular spend on this card in addition to manufacturing some spend. Here are the offer details:

[Edit: there are also offers for a 20% bonus but no minimum spend.]

In addition, if you use this card for purchases outside the US during this timeframe, your foreign transaction fees will be reimbursed!

There’s a max bonus of 10,000 miles for this promotion. The miles will post 6-8 weeks after the end of the promotion, which works out to mid-to-late October. Will you be taking advantage of this promotion?

Back in April 2013 some friends contacted me about joining them for a cruise down the Rhine river. They were considering a cruise with Viking Cruises which was running a special deal: if we signed up for a 2014 cruise before 30 April 2013, we got 2-for-1 pricing. Having never been to that part of Europe before I was on board immediately.

As I was flying from a different city from the rest of the group, I handled my own airfare. It just so happened that in the fall of 2012 US Airways was running one of its targeted sales that offered a 100% bonus on purchased miles. I had made two purchases of 25,000 miles (+ 25,000 bonus miles) during that sale. I was able to buy both at the beginning and the end of the sale which split the charge over two credit card cycles for me. The total for both purchases with taxes was ~$1800 and left me with a 100K US Airways Dividend miles balance.

Since the time I purchased those miles I’ve learned not to buy miles speculatively (without a pre-planned purpose). But it was great to have those miles in reserve when I needed them! I would not typically use these miles on a domestic fare (unless it was really expensive) but $1800 is a great price for a business-class ticket to Europe.

At the time I used these miles US Airways was part of the Star Alliance. That gave me a great number of choices to get to Europe. Our cruise departed from Amsterdam (AMS) and ended in Basel, Switzerland on a Thursday. Not really wanting to fly back to the States for one work day, one of my friends and I decided to take an extra couple of days and take the train to Zurich (ZRH), spend a couple of days and fly home from there.

US Airways allowed one stopover of more than 24 hours OR one open jaw on an award ticket. (An open jaw is where you fly into one city and out of another.) My ticket would be an open jaw since I was flying into AMS and out of ZRH.

Even though I had US Airways miles, I knew that the United Airlines award search tool was MUCH better. At the time, the US Airways search tool did not display any Star Alliance partner award flights, which made it useless if US Airways did not fly into that city.

Using the United search tool I found a one-stop flight to Amsterdam from my home in Memphis via Houston on United. Sadly, United only flies one-cabin regional jets out of Memphis so no business class for me on the MEM-IAH leg. But that was the only one! In Houston I connected to a United flight that took me non-stop to Amsterdam in a flat-bed business seat.

For the return trip I had to make a couple of stops. I originally looked only for flights with flat-bed seats. This led to a complicated itinerary with two stops in Europe before landing in Chicago where I would have taken another one-cabin regional jet home – and I didn’t land until quite late. After I booked this ticket I began to think more about the route I was taking and started looking for alternatives. I eventually settled on a Lufthansa flight to Munich (MUC), connecting to another Lufthansa flight to Charlotte and then a US Airways flight back to Memphis that got me home several hours earlier than the trip I’d originally booked.

I called US Airways and changed the flights. There was a $150 fee because I’m not an elite US Airways member but I’d decided it was worth it.

My flight from ZRH to MUC was on one of Lufthana’s CityLine planes, meaning a short flight in a regional jet. But since I had a business class ticket, I had an empty seat beside me and that was fine for the short flight.

I connected to one of Lufthansa’s Airbus A340-600s for the flight to Charlotte. I’d originally avoided this plane since it only has angle-flat seats in business class but I later realized that since this was a daytime flight, I probably wouldn’t be sleeping much anyway – and indeed I did not.

My flight from Charlotte to Memphis was also on a Canadair regional jet that featured a first class section.

Flights for this route.Map courtesy of gcmap.com

So that’s the “how” I booked the trip. Next up: the actual flight to Amsterdam.